Princess Gryph is almost done with her tour of Equestria, collecting centennial census data from all its towns and cities. Her last stop is Ponyville, where she meets the eager young princess, Twilight Sparkle, who insists on tagging along while she fulfills her royal duties. The tired, homesick foreign princess dismisses Twilight's initial enthusiasm, but eventually the two begin to learn from each other.
When Princess Gryph can't manage to keep a low profile and encounters setbacks, tensions begin to rise. As Twilight and friends help her mediate her desire to be home with her family and her need to calm her overworked nerves, it creates a new opportunity to rediscover friendship.
Chapters (1)
I have mixed feelings about this story. On one hand, the story seems to be about an alicorn OC, and treads Mary Sue-ish water (mostly just in how the OC character enters the picture and immediately becomes the center of attention). On the other hand you have written at least 10x more (and thus, in my thinking put 10x more thought and effort into it) than a typical "alicorn oc" story, and your description caught my eye and was written well. The conflict's premise is interesting, and your characterization is very solid, at least as far as the canon characters are concerned.
Your grammar is very solid, as well. The only error I noticed repeatedly is in regards to referring to a character directly as you speak to them; when you do this the name is always treated as parenthetical and thus always takes commas on either side (The example that kept coming up was when ponies referred to Gryph as "Princess"). Now, as far as your writing style is concerned, well, I found it somewhat prosaic, if I'm being honest with you. I think it has a lot to do with your use of the first person perspective; I think the story doesn't benefit from that choice in the slightest.
As long as I'm being honest here, I think the weakest part of the story is actually Gryph herself; strange, considering she's clearly the entire point of the story. She feels like Twilight 2.0, except even more Sue-ish. Twilight came to Ponyville being the personal student of Princess Celestia; Gryph came to Ponyville being a foreign princess and "Princess of Knowledge, Keeper of the Flame...". I also found it extremely unpleasant to read how Gryph thought so little of the fundamental parts of the show, and took credit for others (Elements of Harmony and Granny Smith finding the Zap Apples, respectively). What flaws Gryph DOES have don't serve to equinize her or make her more relatable, they just grate on the reader's nerves. Whereas Twilight came off as anti-social and thought very little of friendship, Gryph comes off as a holier-than-thou and thinks very little of seemingly everything.
Because of the concerns above, I'm going to give you downvote. I wish you the best of luck with the story, though. Your writing is not bad, and I think if you wrote something else, you'd receive more positive attention.
Cheers,
-Comrade
Okay so we generally don't do this but I want to point out that I reviewed this for Twilight's Library. I unfortunately had to reject it. Im not going to explain why right here but rather tell you to go read the rejection post I made about it (go to forum and its under rejected incoming fanfics). As I said we generally don't take the time to tell authors there fic has been rejected in a comment but a lot of the time people dont read our rejection posts. I really want you to read what I said because it might help you make this story work in your favor
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I replied in the thread, thank you for your feedback.
I knew I'd get flak for the alicorn OC thing, but if that's the main reason for it being rejected, I do not have any plans of changing her. Though again, I appreciate you taking the time to read and give me your honest feedback.
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As far as the Mary Sue-ish aspect of being the "center of attention", I felt, given her role, that was pretty much unavoidable. Though we have not yet seen the general town's response to Cadence or Twilicorn, they have been seen treating Equestrian royalty like, well, royalty. Only way I can think to balance that out would be to have her tucking her wings and not wearing her adornments from the get-go, which might be a good idea, seeing how she wants to keep a low profile and she's done this like a million times, so it would seem she'd have at least that much foresight. I might go back and revise that.
You are probably right in that the writing is very dry, and that can be attributed directly to Gryph as the first-person narrator. Were it in third person, it would probably be a more enjoyable read, or even if it were from the perspective of Twilight or Granny. However, were I to write that it would be a different story entirely. And if Gryph wasn't such a bitch. Just say it: she's kind of a bitch. She is totally meant to be holier-than-thou. And if you hate her for it, that's okay. I just see it as a direct consequence of her particular field of expertise. If you've ever known anyone who has a really high IQ or is recognized as above-and-beyond in intelligence, you know what I'm talking about. She is literally a know-it-all. I can see how that might edge a little too far into Mary Sue territory for some people, but again, I can't do much to change who she is. (Seems counterintuitive, seeing how I created her and all, but it's true.) Only thing I could do to mitigate that would be to perhaps go into a little more detail as to how she does her job, what the archives are like, and how the Flame works (this would, btw, help explain those parts where you felt Gryph was taking credit for others). Which I wanted to, but it was already getting a lot longer than I'd originally intended. But hey, at least she has more characterization than Celestia.
Thank you for taking the time to read, though, and I appreciate your thoughtful feedback. I noticed that as soon as I posted this I got a downvote, before anyone could have realistically had enough time to read the story, and I suspect that was given at the sight of an alicorn. I appreciate you reading through the whole thing and giving it a fair chance. Though if your downvote is just because you hate Gryph, I'd like to see you reconsider your vote, as she is supposed to be somewhat hateable.
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I figured from the sort of writing I was reading that most of what was there was put there deliberately. Whatever else I think of this story, I won't say it's careless or written poorly. I'd go so far as to argue that it's written better than many other stories I enjoyed much more. So, having realized this was all done on purpose still didn't help me enjoy it. I clicked on the story and read the description because I was interested in the premise of the Equestrian Census. Even once I figured it was an Alicorn OC story I gave it a chance because of a combination of interest of premise, and a certain element of faith earned from having written a good description.
For what it's worth, I respect your attitude and your writing ability. When you write the next chapter I'll give the fic another shot and reevaluate my decision to downvote.
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AHAHAA "Next Chapter", that's cute, but no. This was a one-time thing, just a one shot. I rarely do fanfics. Ever. This is maybe the third I've written in a lifetime of writing. I only wrote it because it was itching to be written, and I was trying to stretch my muscles a bit to get back into writing. I might consider going into more detail about the Flame and Reinkjavik and such if there's a demand for it, but it's doubtful. Or if I end up with a head full of headcannon like I did this time, which is more likely. Besides that, I'm hesitant to go on fleshing out a griffon homeland until we see what the writers give us in Season 4. I'm trying to keep my fic as cannon as possible and want to do as little retcon-ing as possible.
But thank you for at least recognizing good proofreading. It took a lot more time than I intended to put this story together :p
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...based on this, I've got to assume you don't have a lot of experience with people who have really high IQs. Or, for that matter, psychometrics—since intelligence and personality constructs (other than openness) have very low correlations.
I'm not going to let that comment impact my reading of the story, but nonetheless, I thought it deserved a response...
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I actually know a couple people who are like this; maybe my friends are just jerks. :p